Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

This is the place for general and miscellaneous posts on topics which might extend past the boundaries of any specific region. No non-grocery posts.
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Alpha8472
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Re: Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

Post by Alpha8472 »

Suave brand at my local Walmart is made in China.

The name is meaningless if it the same horrible smelling hand sanitizer that is coming out of China. Some of those were found to contain toxic methanol.

I work in a pharmacy, and if drugs are made in China, they often do not list country of origin. I see many with just a corporate name, but no factory address.
storewanderer
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Re: Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

Post by storewanderer »

There seem to be a couple different versions of Suave Hand Sanitizer (which is now on clearance at most Wal Marts, some locations went as low as 50 cents each), some is Made in USA and some is Made in China, it seems to vary on the bottle shape. I also see some new Suave Liquid Hand Soap which seems to have quickly flown off the shelves.

On that note I am noticing scattered product shortages starting to crop up again. Cleaning products basically never recovered, and more recently I am noticing the high turn SKUs of name brand "canned meat" type items (Spam, etc.) seem to be out of stock or nearly out of stock everywhere with the lower turn SKUs (low sodium, private label, etc.) also in short supply.

There seems to be a major oversupply of masks and hand sanitizer everywhere. Wal Mart is clearancing some of these items and Smiths has been running "buy one get one free" on masks and hand sanitizers the past couple weeks. Cannot believe stores like Walgreens trying to get $25 for a box of 50 masks and calling it a sale. Those blue cheap looking masks have been readily available online at between $3-$8 for 50 masks for months now.
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Re: Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

Post by babs »

Costco is out of toilet paper, all brands. Here we go again.
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Re: Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

Post by mbz321 »

babs wrote: October 30th, 2020, 8:25 am Costco is out of toilet paper, all brands. Here we go again.

I work at Costco....paper products are going like crazy. Even with the Limits of 1 per membership, it's been hard to keep stock. TP has generally been okayish for now (although specific brands have been hit-or-miss) but paper towels and napkins have been in short supply. We have been selling some off brands (some Canadian TP, a bamboo TP, some chinese paper towels) and they are still flying off the shelf. Plenty of soap/sanitizer/other cleaning supplies and no real noticeable food shortages, although some weird food and non-food items have limits (like frozen ice cream bars, frozen taquitos, cascade dishwasher pods, etc.)
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Re: Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

Post by jamcool »

It may also be fears of violence due to the elections
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Re: Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

Post by BillyGr »

storewanderer wrote: October 29th, 2020, 11:45 pm There seems to be a major oversupply of masks and hand sanitizer everywhere. Wal Mart is clearancing some of these items and Smiths has been running "buy one get one free" on masks and hand sanitizers the past couple weeks. Cannot believe stores like Walgreens trying to get $25 for a box of 50 masks and calling it a sale. Those blue cheap looking masks have been readily available online at between $3-$8 for 50 masks for months now.
Though you have to remember there are still many people out there that don't do everything (or anything for that matter) online, and if they need something they may not shop around for a better deal.
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Re: Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

Post by klkla »

FWIW I was in Vons last night and they were fully stocked in both paper towels and toilette paper. Hopefully this is just a specific issue for Costco.
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Re: Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

Post by Alpha8472 »

Northern California recently had some PG&E power outages forced upon thousands of customers. The threat of high winds and fire danger caused many people to lose power and stores have been wiped out of some products. No major fires have started and most people had their power turned back on. The lines at Walmart were quite long just before and during the outages.

Other supermarkets seemed to have some shortages. However, I did see some toilet paper at various stores such as Safeway. Those single rolls of made in Mexico Kleenex brand toilet paper are not selling. The Safeway near me had to put them in a large plastic bag and try to clearance them. The other brands of toilet paper are selling out.

There is a threat of violent riots and looting if the election goes badly. Walmart is installing steel doors at their entrances. These are similar to the metal roll down garage style doors that you see at Best Buy. Many stores are boarding up windows.

Pharmacies are halting drug deliveries and some pharmacies are transporting drugs out of the pharmacies to secure vault locations in distant areas.

Some pharmacies have recently installed advanced automated tear gas systems. If the pharmacy is being robbed tear gas systems will flood the store with tear gas and choke any robbers. Some pharmacies have a panic room: a safe room with a separate clean oxygen supply.
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Re: Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

Post by storewanderer »

klkla wrote: October 30th, 2020, 1:14 pm FWIW I was in Vons last night and they were fully stocked in both paper towels and toilette paper. Hopefully this is just a specific issue for Costco.
I was in a smaller NorCal Safeway today (30k square foot store) and it had a full paper towel and toilet paper 3/4 of one side of an aisle as well. Mostly private label items, limited on other brands for toilet paper; paper towels had a better brand assortment. $9 sale price on the 24 "mega" store brand bath tissue is a solid deal. I was also in a few larger NorCal Safeways (the usual 55k square foot stores) those have longer aisles and full aisles for the paper products and those aisles were all no more than half full.

Target was similar, plenty of product, but far from full stocked. Rite Aid seems to slowly be recovering on paper products; at their prices, they will not sell much until everyone else runs out.

These stores better set quantity limits before it is too late.
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Re: Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

Post by storewanderer »

Went to Smiths tonight. New signs posted which appear to be corporate issue signs as I saw them in two different locations "limit 2 per item in the following categories: paper products, hand soap, ..." I forget what else. I asked an employee and they said it was limit 2 per actual item not per category, so for instance I could take 2 packs of every different SKU of paper towels on the shelf. Kind of a useless policy if you ask me.

The first Smiths I went to, looked basically normal, in terms of how it was stocked. Some issues, but it always has some in-stock issues with its size. The next Smiths I went to, was a little different, and it is a larger store and usually the better stocked of the two. Paper product aisle which is huge was no more than 20% stocked. Also cold medicine area seemed a little empty (still had some assortment of whatever medicine type you could want, just a lot of empty spots). Moving to the food area the canned soup, canned meat, etc. aisle was about 50% stocked at best. Everything else seemed pretty much full and well stocked.

One thing was funny is Smiths had some Kroger Hand Sanitizer. Made in USA same supplier as who made almost all of the different store's private label hand sanitizers before the pandemic. Interesting as most others have not gotten store brand hand sanitizer back or if they got it back it is now made in China (Wal Mart and Safeway). I have not seen this stuff from the old USA supplier since March. The price now is 2.49 buy 1 get 1 free however the formula appears to be modified to 62% ethyl alcohol (old package from last year I have is 63%). The price last year was 1.99 regular than 1.00 sale during the holidays/into January.

The risk seems to be radically higher now than it was back in March/April when people were stockpiling. Active COVID cases in my area are up 10x+ from what they were in March/April. I am also getting a little frustrated and I have seen this now quite a few times in the past week, with little 4-5 year old kids in stores with no masks on coughing everywhere and not covering their mouth. This seems to be a serious risk for product contamination. I think it is time for some stores to limit how many people per group enter similar to what Costco was doing for a while earlier in the year (only 2 people per card could enter or something).

Given COVID cases are also skyrocketing in Europe and some countries there are locked down again, I will be curious to see if those stores have a better or worse time dealing with the increased demand and product shortages.
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